Short Take: Seagate announces a read-while-write tape drive

, a manufacturer of Travan and DAT tape-drive products, announced its Travan TR-4 drive, featuring hardware read-while-write functionality. This feature eliminates the need for a separate data-verification pass because the data is verified by a separate head after it is written, resulting in faster overall backup times, said the company. The drive has a backup capacity of up to 4 gigabytes, up to 8 gigabytes with compression. It transfers data at speeds up to 600 kilobytes per second.